


the best thing a flower can do

by kathkin



Series: The White Lion (a Witcher dæmon AU) [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Feels, Daemon Settling, Four Marks... but with daemons!, Gen, Same-Sex Daemons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23053777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathkin/pseuds/kathkin
Summary: Runt is a pig, most of the time. Pig is easy. Pig is comfortable. Pig is what people expect to see, when they look at her. When Runt changes her shape people are startled. Runt doesn’t change her shape often, unless they’re alone.
Series: The White Lion (a Witcher dæmon AU) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656127
Comments: 24
Kudos: 626





	the best thing a flower can do

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Wikipedia on [dæmons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_\(His_Dark_Materials\)).
> 
> 2) See end notes for dæmon key!

Runt is a pig, most of the time. Pig is easy. Pig is comfortable. Pig is what people expect to see, when they look at her. When Runt changes her shape people are startled. Runt doesn’t change her shape often, unless they’re alone.

Runt is a pig, the day they hold her down in the dirt, and as fear and desperation flood her body Runt’s squeals and their laughter echo all around her, mingling into a single sound, a _yes, yes, yes_.

Space around her. Silence. A steady, persistent humming, in her skull, in her ears.

She’s in a cavernous place. The air is cold and smells like salt. Skulls grin on all sides of her. Runt has stopped squealing. She huddles in close to Yennefer, and says nothing. She does not know where she is. She is alone, a hundred, a thousand miles away from her home for all she knows; and yet she’s not alone. There’s a boy.

His dæmon sits upon his chest, a green moth with trailing wings that bear marks like eyes. Her bearing is calm, and still. She doesn’t seem of this world. He doesn’t seem of this world. This place, doesn’t seem of this world. He talks nonsense and when she doesn’t understand his nonsense he calls her a virgin.

She slaps him.

“Your backhand is even more impressive than your magic,” he says. On his chest his dæmon’s wings flick, the first sign of emotion she’s given off.

“My what?” she says.

“You were lucky,” he says, kneeling before her.

“Lucky?” she echoes.

He nods at Runt, still a pig. “If he’d been on the other side when you closed the portal you really _would_ have been dead.”

Runt is a spider. She runs up Yennefer’s arm and hides in her hair. When the boy rises and darts away from them, his dæmon fluttering up into the air in palpable shock, for a moment she thinks it’s because he’s so startled at seeing Runt change.

But that isn’t it. “What’s wrong?” she says.

He comes back holding a flower, delicate, blue, like he and his dæmon with an unearthly quality.

“She’ll be coming for you,” he says.

Runt has emerged from her hiding place, still spider-shaped, to listen, to watch, as the boy puts the flower in his mouth; as he speaks words that make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, that make Runt shiver; as he splits the air apart.

He says: it’s a different kind of portal. He says: it’ll take you home.

Runt, still a spider, crawls up her neck and in her softest voice says into her ear, “ _don’t_.”

She knows what Runt means, and why. It’s not that she’s afraid the portal might lead somewhere else, somewhere deadly, though she is afraid. It’s that the thought of never having to go home again thrills something in her, something dark and dangerous. Runt doesn’t want to go. They have never disagreed before – not like this.

If she means to go home, Runt won’t – can’t – stop her. But she has enough sense not to stop through a doorway when she has no idea where it leads.

“Look,” says the boy, following her, taking her hand. His dæmon, who has been fluttering about him, comes to rest upon his shoulder. “You can _trust_ me.”

Yennefer looks past him, looks at his dæmon. “What’s her name?” she says.

He hesitates, but only for a moment. “Noor,” he says.

She goes.

*

When they were very small, at night Runt would be a ferret, sinuous, with soft fur and little paws, fitting gently against her body.

The day the woman comes for them she’s a pig, blending in with all the other pigs.

The woman’s dæmon is a spider, large as a hand and covered in black fur like velvet. He sits on her chest, over her heart, perfectly still. If you didn’t know better you might think he was an ornament. He gives no sign of what he is thinking, or feeling.

They sit in the back of the cart. Yennefer rests her hand on Runt’s head. They don’t speak to each other, or not with words, but she knows what Runt is thinking; she always knows what Runt is thinking.

“What’s his name?” says the woman.

She means Runt. Yennefer doesn’t answer.

“Smart girl,” says the woman.

Runt turns from a pig to a ferret and crawls into Yennefer’s waiting arms, to be cradled, gentled, held to her chest.

Runt is never a pig again.

*

Runt says, “don’t.” She says it over and over, “don’t, don’t, don’t,” and that’s the last thing Yennefer hears as her consciousness slips away. Runt’s voice saying, “don’t.”

When she wakes, the first thing she hears is the woman’s voice. “Do you know how many people wouldn’t blink if you died?”

Her wrists are bandaged. Runt is on the pillow beside her, still a ferret.

“You get to live.”

Runt wants badly to turn into a spider and hide herself. She can feel it. But not now – not now, and not before that formidable spider-dæmon.

The woman’s name is Tissaia de Vries. She is the Rectoress of Aretuza. She does not volunteer the name of her dæmon, her dæmon who still has not moved before Yennefer’s eyes, not so much as twitched a leg.

“You should’ve let me die,” Yennefer says, and beside her Runt quivers. “At least I had control over that.”

“Oh, that’s adorable, piglet,” Tissaia drawls, and something inside her burns, and Runt shows her teeth. “You weren’t taking control. You were losing it.” Her eyes flick to Runt, on the bed beside Yennefer, back arched, teeth on display. “What’s his name?”

Yennefer says, “she’s a girl.”

Tissaia says, “hm,” her eyes tracing Runt’s arched, tense form, and Yennefer can feel her storing that information away for future use. She wishes she had said nothing.

*

She goes to the greenhouse, Runt cat-shaped beside her; and Runt stays cat-shaped, whenever anyone is there to see.

Most of the girls at Aretuza are settled; in fact, she finds, she is the only one in the group who is not. If they were not settled already, they settled when they first wielded chaos. Runt did not settle. She is old to be unsettled as it is. Why did Runt not settled.

She learns the girls’ names, and she studies their dæmons, trying to understand them. Fringilla, a swan. Doralis, a twitchy deer. Lark, a grey fox. Sabrina, a little gazelle. Anica, an adder.

She knows enough of dæmons to know that understanding them isn’t always simple. Doralis and Sabrina’s dæmons aren’t so different from each other. As girls they could not be less alike.

“His name is Arlo,” Anica tells her.

They are in the room where Yennefer sleeps. She has been at Aretuza almost a week, and Anica should not be in her room; if they’re caught they’ll be in trouble, but she is smart enough not to get caught, she thinks.

Anica lays her dæmon down on the blanket, and he slithers there, getting comfortable. Yennefer moves her bare foot away from him.

“He was settled just before we came here,” says Anica. “I was frightened. I don’t like snakes.”

“You’ll get used to it,” says Yennefer. 

She’ll have to, won’t she? Arlo will be a snake forever. She’ll get used to it, or be repulsed by a part of herself, forever.

“I think I’m getting to like it,” says Anica.

She’s looking, now, at Runt, curled up on the pillow, tail flicking, restless. Anica won’t ask her name but she’s waiting for Yennefer to introduce her. Yennefer’s stomach twists.

“She doesn’t have a proper name,” she says, and Anica’s eyes widen at that pronoun, but not by much, and she says nothing. “My father died before he could give her one.”

“I’m sorry,” says Anica. “I’m so sorry.”

Yennefer doesn’t tell the rest of the story. She doesn’t say that her father would never have named her dæmon if he had lived, for he had no dæmon of his own to name hers. She doesn’t say that her mother’s dæmon didn’t name hers either, and she doesn’t know why. It’s customary for a father’s dæmon to name a girl’s dæmon, and a mother’s dæmon to name a son’s, but they aren’t so beholden to custom as to leave a dæmon nameless when one parent is dead.

She didn’t give her dæmon a name. They didn’t need names, between the two of them. But Runt was often a piglet and so her brothers and sisters and her parents had taken to calling her _Runt_ and it had stuck.

“You could,” says Anica, voice tinged with trepidation, “give her a name.”

And Yennefer thinks: _could I_? and she thinks: _well, why not_?

She says, “I could give her a name.”

That night, in their bed, ferret-shaped Runt wriggles across the pillow and says in her ear, “why can’t I stay Runt?”

“Forever?” says Yennefer.

“Maybe,” says Runt.

“I can’t tell people your name is _Runt_ ,” says Yennefer.

“Then don’t tell them anything,” says Runt. “We don’t need them. We don’t need anyone except each other.”

“Maybe I want other people,” says Yennefer.

Runt turns over, and faces away from her as she falls asleep.

*

How do you name a dæmon?

If there were any parents to be found she might have Runt ask their dæmons. But there were no mothers, at Aretuza. They might ask Tissaia’s dæmons – because in spite of all her faults Tissaia is the only person she knows who she thinks might be wise enough to answer – but Runt is too afraid of him.

Runt is afraid of everything, and everyone. It had never frustrated her before, because she had been afraid too, but now Runt’s habit of shrinking from every hint of danger infuriates her. Lightning frightens Runt. Skulls frighten Runt. The sea frightens her. Other _fucking_ dæmons frighten her.

It’s not her fault, Yennefer reminds herself. Runt’s used to being sneered at, and snapped and growled and hissed at. But so is Yennefer, and she’s not afraid any more.

“How do you name a dæmon?” she says to Istredd.

“My mother’s dæmon named Noor,” says Istredd.

“It means light,” says Noor. She has a soft voice. Like gossamer.

But they’ve misunderstood. They think maybe the customs for naming dæmons are different in Aedirn. “But how did he pick the name?” she says, breaking protocol to address Noor directly.

Noor, perched on her boy’s wrist, flutters her wings. “I never asked,” she says tartly. She feels slighted, of course. It ought to be Runt addressing her. But Runt shies from other dæmons, even ones she’s not afraid of, because if she got close to them they’d want her name and she won’t give it to them.

Yennefer picks up Runt, still in the shape of a cat. “My father died before he could name her,” she explains. “I’m trying to find a name.”

“I don’t know if I can help you,” says Istredd. “If you don’t have a parent to name her I think you need to do it yourself.”

It’s strange, Yennefer reflects, how people seem to agree. It’s not custom, as far as she knows, to name your own dæmon. But people look at her situation – as they understand it – and say, _this is a problem you have to solve yourself._

“I know _that_ ,” she says. “I’m not asking you to name her. I just don’t know where to look for a name.”

“Inside yourself,” says Noor, and Istredd shushes her. Huffing, she flutters away from him.

“Try the library?” he suggests.

She changes tack. “When did Noor settle?”

“Just before we came to Ban Ard,” says Istredd.

“Was it –”

Istredd catches her drift. “Yes,” he says.

“We didn’t settle,” says Yennefer. “I don’t know why we didn’t settle.”

“I think,” says Istredd, “when it happens, you’ll know why.”

*

They can speak to each other, now, without talking. It’s a gift, and one that Runt adores. Once they have mastered it she doesn’t speak aloud for weeks, preferring to let Yennefer hear her thoughts as she pleases, even when they are alone. Yennefer misses the sound of her voice.

She goes to the library. She looks in books, at lists of names. Runt lies at her feet, restless, uninterested.

One day Sabrina and Fringilla linger outside the greenhouse, waiting for her, and her whole body goes tense as wet rope. At her feet Runt quivers, and reaching down she scoops her up into her arms.

Sabrina has neither said nor done anything to retaliate, for what Yennefer did in the Tower of the Gulls. Not yet, and that unsettles her. But Tissaia isn’t far away. She’s well within earshot. They won’t do anything to her with Tissaia there to hear. Neither can she do anything to them.

“What do you want?” she says.

“I don’t want anything,” says Sabrina. Her eyes range over Runt, shivering in Yennefer’s arms, drinking her in. “You know, where I’m from they say black cats bring good fortune.”

“Ironic,” Yennefer says, catching Sabrina’s drift and jumping in ahead of her. 

“Quite,” says Sabrina. Ducking her head, her dæmon says something softly to Fringilla’s swan.

“What do you want?” says Yennefer again.

“Nothing,” says Sabrina, blithely, as if she’s astonished Yennefer would think she wants anything.

“Did you stop us just to make personal remarks?” says Yennefer.

“It’s not a personal remark,” says Sabrina. “Maybe I was trying to pay you a compliment.”

“You weren’t,” says Yennefer.

“There’s no need to be like that.” Again Sabrina eyes Runt, and she adds, “Piglet.” Beside her Fringilla huffs a laugh.

In her arms Runt squirms, and kicks, and leaping to the stone floor she turns from a cat to a bristling wolf and Yennefer catches Sabrina’s shocked intake of breath at the change before Runt pounces.

She pins Sabrina’s gazelle-dæmon to the floor and holds him there, and Sabrina cries out, reeling back as if she’s been struck. Hissing Fringilla’s dæmon rushes at Runt, beating at her with his wings, jabbing furiously with his beak. Yennefer feels it, feels each blow like an echo, but Runt doesn’t waver. She holds Sabrina’s dæmon down even as he spits insults and kicks at her at his hooves and lashes out with his long horns.

They’re going to hurt her; or else she’s going to hurt them. Both of them can hold their own in a fight but Runt can be anything with fangs and claws. Tissaia is on the other side of the archway. She’ll hear. “Don’t,” Yennefer cries out. “Don’t. Don’t.”

She doesn’t hear Tissaia approaching over the hisses and growls and yells of their dæmons but she knows she’s there when Fringilla’s dæmon springs back, wings flapping one last time before coming to rest. He spits out a beakful of grey fur and goes to stand beside his girl. Runt lets Sabrina’s dæmon up and slinks back into the shape of a cat, turning her face away and washing her paws as if to say, _I did nothing. Why are you looking at me?_

Sabrina’s dæmon gets, unsteadily, to his feet.

“You will not,” says Tissaia, voice ringing out in the stone passage like bells. “Brawl like children.”

“Yes, rectoress,” murmurs Sabrina. Fringilla turns her eyes down, but says nothing.

Tissaia looks to Yennefer.

“Sorry, rectoress,” she says, though Runt ought to be the one apologising. Runt, who is placidly washing her face.

“Dismissed,” says Tissaia.

But the moment her back is turned, Runt hisses to Sabrina’s dæmon, “you don’t scare me.”

*

That night, as she’s falling asleep, Runt nuzzles her face, cat-shaped, and says, “I chose a name.”

“You can’t go on being Runt,” says Yennefer sleepily.

“A better name,” says her dæmon, and putting her mouth close by Yennefer’s ear she tells her.

*

The flower sits on Tissaia’s desk. “What will you do with it?” says Yennefer.

“Nothing,” says Tissaia. “Simply wanted to know that you could control your emotions and get it from the boy.” Her dæmon sits on her chest, motionless. “You may go, Yennefer.”

“Does this mean I get to ascend?” Yennefer blurts out. Clinging to her shoulder, rat-shaped, her dæmon says silently _no – don’t_. Yennefer ignores her. 

Tissaia stares at her, as ever her dæmon betraying no trace of what she might be thinking. She turns away.

“Her name is Lysandra,” says Yennefer. She feels Lys tense on her shoulder – but with this she doesn’t argue.

Tissaia doesn’t look at her. But her dæmon leaves his favoured place on her chest, crawling up to her shoulder to peer over it at Yennefer and Lys. “Smart girl,” he says.

Tissaia says, “listen for the knock.”

*

She hides in the cavern, Lys moth-shaped on her shoulder, and watches as they disappear. A deer. A snake. A grey fox. At Tissaia’s gesture they melt into the air like smoke, and their girls’ clothes fall empty to the floor.

And for the first time since she fell into the Tower of the Gulls, she begins to understand.

“What happens to their dæmons?” she asks.

“The same thing that happens to anyone else’s dæmons,” says Tissaia. “Sometimes the best thing a flower can do for us is die.”

Lys sits on her shoulder, still moth-shaped, unafraid. She doesn’t so much as twitch an antenna. Yennefer can feel her thinking, but she doesn’t speak, with her voice nor her mind.

She pushes Anica into the water, and it should repulse her – all of this, should repulse her – but it doesn’t. She sits beside the water and watches the light play upon its surface, feels the magic humming beneath.

Lysandra takes flight from her shoulder. Turning into a raven she flies out over the water, circling, watching the eels swim. Yennefer watches her fly, black feathers glossy in the light from the pool, and she understands. She won’t ever change again.

**Author's Note:**

> Dæmons in this fic:
> 
> **Yennefer & Runt/Lysandra/Lys:** [raven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_raven#/media/File:Corvuscorax001.jpg).  
>  **Istredd & Noor:** [Spanish moon moth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graellsia_isabellae#/media/File:Graellsia_isabellae1.jpg).  
>  **Anica & Arlo:** [adder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipera_berus#/media/File:Benny_Trapp_Vipera_berus.jpg).
> 
> **Tissaia:** [Brazilian black tarantula](https://www.jonathansjungleroadshow.co.uk/images/brazilianblacktarantula1.jpg?crc=331731286).  
>  **Sabrina:** [Dorcas gazelle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorcas_gazelle#/media/File:Dorcasgazellemarwell.jpg).  
>  **Fringilla:** [mute swan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mute_swan#/media/File:Mute_swan_Vrhnika.jpg).  
>  **Doralis:** [fallow deer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallow_deer#/media/File:Fallow_deer_in_field.jpg).  
>  **Lark:** [grey fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_fox#/media/File:Grey_Fox_\(Urocyon_cinereoargenteus\).jpg).


End file.
